Pharmacist counseling and outcomes of smoking cessation

Abstract

The Pharmacists Educating Patients Program (PEPP) was designed (1) to provide pharmacists with smoking cessation consultation guidelines for patients on nicotine transdermal therapy and (2) to test the effectiveness of these pharmacists' consultation services. More than 6,500 pharmacies and 40,220 patients participated in this program. One year after treatment began, a survey of 2,001 patients on nicotine transdermal therapy found that those who had not joined a comprehensive smoking cessation program (86.5%) but were counseled by a pharmacist had a self-reported smoking cessation rate of 37% at the end of treatment, and 33% at an average of 10 months after treatment. The average length of treatment was five weeks. Patients who participated in a comprehensive behavioral smoking cessation program, such as SmokEnders, and who also received counseling from their pharmacists (13.5% of surveyed patients) had a quit rate of 62% at the end of treatment and 45% after 10 months. Among surveyed patients, those who stopped smoking reported that their pharmacists' counseling had been more intense and more helpful than the counseling reported by those who did not stop smoking. In addition, those who stopped smoking had more pharmacist counseling interventions and more weeks on nicotine patch treatment than did those who failed to stop smoking. Results of this study show that pharmacists who counsel patients on nicotine transdermal therapy about smoking cessation can improve outcomes.